'I left you in the debris
At the Sunday morning market
You were sorting through the odds and ends
You was looking for a bargain'

Ronnie Lane ‘Debris’


'As beautiful as the chance encounter of a sewing machine and an umbrella on a dissecting table'

Comte de Lautreamont ‘Les Chants de Maldoror’

Flea markets and boot sales are the natural inheritors of Lautreamont's sentence, which was eagerly claimed by the Surrealists as a forerunner of their dream worldscapes. On the tables or the ground, the objects take on new relationships, sometimes banal, sometimes startling.

All the images here were photographed as seen in Brighton; no changes were made from how they were encountered. At a flea market, everything is on common ground.

The cameras used were a 1982 Leica R4 and a 1934 Voigtlander Brillant.

Ian Kearey has been taking photographs on film since childhood, working through bakelite Brownie 127s and folding Kodak 620s and a myriad of cheap Russian Leica copies. He is interested in the possibilities of randomness and chance, sometimes using outdated or damaged film stock. This is his first exhibition.